THE BUSY PERSON'S GUIDE - I Done This · never going to stop talking to me; the budget is a mess...
Transcript of THE BUSY PERSON'S GUIDE - I Done This · never going to stop talking to me; the budget is a mess...
THE
TO THE DONE LISTThe Science of Small Wins
by Bailey Adams
BUSY PERSON'S
GUIDE
2
THE
TO THE DONE LIST
Copyright 2014 I Done This
This book was written and edited by Bailey Adams
by Bailey Adams
BUSY PERSON'S
GUIDEThe Science of Small Wins
Introduction
Chapter 1
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
Chapter 2
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
Chapter 3
The Motivating Power of Progress
Chapter 4
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
Chapter 5
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
Chapter 6
How to Make Your Done List
Epilogue
Notes
5
6
13
19
25
32
39
47
48
Contents
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Introduction
Hello!
Ever suffer sinking guilt from feeling like you didn’t get nearly
enough done? Does it seem like you’re running around, busy all
day but rarely get to the stuff that matters to you like spending
more time creating or with your loved ones or making more of a
difference?
Focusing on what’s still left on your plate or thinking that you
didn’t accomplish anything today can get you stuck in a spin cycle,
going in circles and never quite taking off, heading downward
toward burnout and stress. There will always be more tasks on
your to-do list, always more work to do.
At I Done This, we think there’s a better way. Pausing to recognize
all the great stuff you do with a done list provides vital motivation,
accountability, and direction — lighting your path forward with
encouragement and an enriched perspective.
Stick with us to learn the science behind how a done list helps
you work smarter and get more of what matters done with
encouragement, gratitude, insight, and inspiration.
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Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
The to-do list is an inescapable, age-old productivity tool. We
make lists in our very human attempt to create order in our
disorderly lives. Whether you’re a fervent disciple of the to-do list,
or a begrudging list-maker, most of us keep one.
Yet to-do lists always seem to frustrate and overwhelm. Based on
data from our app we discovered that:
41% of to-do items were never completed.
50% of completed to-do items are done within a day.
18% of completed to -do items are done within an hour.
10% of completed to- do items are done within a minute.
15% of dones started as to-do items.
In other words:
you’ll always have unfinished tasks;
tasks that do get completed are done quickly; and
what you get done often doesn’t correlate with what you set
out to do.
So is the to-do list just a blunt instrument to wield in the quest to
get stuff done? Or does the weakness lie deeper in ourselves in the
human struggle to impose order and control?
ONE
8
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
Maybe we’re just not doing it right. Here are four common
problems in how people approach to-do lists:
Problem 1: Too Many To-Do’sFirst of all, we overload our lists. Social psychologist Roy
Baumeister and journalist John Tierney, authors of Willpower:
Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, report in their book
that one person typically has at least 150 different tasks at a time,
and that an executive’s to-do list for a single Monday could take
more than a week to finish. Sounds like a set-up for failure!
What’s more, research by Amy Dalton and Stephen Spiller
uncovers how detailed planning works when you have one big
to-do item but then, the longer your list of tasks and goals, the less
powerful a tool the to-do list becomes.
Overstuffing our lists causes a persistent thrum of worry in
our head that distracts us from tackling the very tasks that are
so worrying. Psychologists Robert Emmons and Laura King
discovered that the anxiety that results from having too many
conflicting goals causes our productivity as well as our physical
and mental health to suffer.
So the to-do list gives and takes. It helps us remember the many
things we have to tackle. At the same time, it’s a nagging tool that
can induce unhealthy, disarming anxiety.
The longer the list of tasks and goals, the less powerful a tool the to-do list becomes.
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Problem 2: We Mistake the Function of To-Do ListsDo you really understand how a to-do list actually works?
Sounds simple enough — it’s a memory aid, a sort of external
brain that nudges you about all the stuff you mean to do. But
what’s surprising is that your to-do list’s mental badgering isn’t to
provoke you to get stuff done!
Let’s explain. Those distracting, nagging thoughts about
uncompleted tasks and unmet goals hanging around in your mind
are known as the Zeigarnik effect. You’d think that the logical
response to “cure” the Zeigarnik effect would be to finish the tasks
and meet the goals. However, Baumeister and E.J. Masicampo
found that the Zeigarnik effect is your unconscious “asking the
conscious mind to make a plan.” It’s not asking the conscious mind
to get off its butt to complete some tasks.
In one of their experiments, they instructed a group of students
to think about an important final exam while another group was
told to create a specific study plan including details like what they
would do, where, and when. Then, when given word fragments to
complete, the students who’d been told merely to think about the
upcoming test filled in exam-related words, while the study-plan
group did not.
Even though the planners had put more effort thinking about their
task and hadn’t even made any actual progress on the task itself,
as Baumeister and Tierney explain, “their minds had apparently
been cleared by the act of writing down a plan.”
Our to-do lists fail us when we don’t think through steps and
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
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plans. And when our lists grow long, it becomes impossible
and ineffective to plan out everything. It’s no wonder we don’t
complete tasks.
Problem 3: We Give Ourselves Too Much TimeIt makes sense, then, that our stats show that when people did
complete tasks, they did them quickly. When goals are broken
into actionable steps, it takes less effort, energy, and time to cross
those smaller, manageable tasks off the list.
Generally though, we tend to be lenient on assigning ourselves
deadlines, which means the chances increase that the task will
never get done. Behavioral economist Dan Ariely found, for
example, that students who had longer to finish three papers
performed worse than those who had externally-imposed or self-
imposed deadlines that were evenly spaced and earlier.
As many procrastinators know, the more time you give yourself,
the less likely it is that you’ll finish in that timeframe. And when
to-do lists become a constant exercise in pushing
things off to tomorrow and the next day, they’re not effective.
Problem 4: The Future is Full of Unknowns, Interruptions, and ChangeOnly 15% of our members’ dones started out as to-do tasks.
That’s a staggeringly small correlation, and it’s something that
you probably notice happening all the time. You manage to get
through the day, working the whole time, but fail to get to most of
the tasks on your list.
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
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Your dones won’t match up with to-do’s if you’re not great at
formulating well-planned to-do tasks to begin with. When you
don’t outline specific actions for your goals but do take some
forward steps, that progress won’t correlate with the original task.
You can’t sort of check or cross off a task as complete.
We also can’t predict the many interruptions that happen in our
day. One LinkedIn survey reported that the most common reason
for failure to get through a to-do list was unplanned tasks such as
unscheduled calls, e-mails, and meetings. Things pop up in our
lives, in and out of the office, little and big fires to be put out — the
kids need a ride to school when they miss the bus; this coworker is
never going to stop talking to me; the budget is a mess and now I
have to fix it.
The to-do list can’t handle the changes that crop up because we
can’t tell the future.
Productivity in Practice: 5 Ways to Make Your To-Do List More EffectiveGive yourself a pat on the back.
Since our minds get overloaded to the point of distraction, forgive
yourself for not getting to 150 tasks. Instead, be realistic about
what you can do in a day and remember that accomplishments
don’t always start out as to-do’s.
You’re probably getting a lot done for which you’re not giving
yourself credit. Writing down what you get done regularly is a
motivating, revealing and useful practice that balances out the
to-do list’s problems and shortcomings. Let the motivation you
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
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get from seeing that visible record of accomplishment push you to
tackle what’s next.
Make more specific, actionable plans.
Make it easier to reach your goals by spending some time thinking
about what that journey will look like. If I set out a vague task
like “write blog post” instead of something specific like “do some
research for a blog post about to-do lists”, I’ll be much less likely to
reach my destination.
Use implementation intentions in your planning.
An implementation intention is a planning strategy that uses an
“if-then” framework to push you toward a desired action.
You put details describing a certain situation like when or where
into the “if” part of the formula and then, specifics of how and
what form the “then” part. For example, if you want to start
exercising more regularly, an implementation intention could be:
“If it is 6 p.m. on a weekday, I will head to the gym for at least half
an hour after work.”
When you give yourself some specific cues in the play of your life,
it turns out you’re more likely to follow them.
Assign yourself deadlines, and make them earlier than you’d
like.
At its most basic, a to-do list is just a bunch of items. Try assigning
due dates for your items or scheduling them into your calendar to
provide some time-based context to them.
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
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Then, make those deadlines earlier rather than later. As found
in Ariely’s study, even when earlier deadlines were self-imposed,
students performed better.
Prioritize.
Look at those 150 tasks you have to do and pick three of the most
important, pressing, or interesting ones to work on today. It’s
easier to focus on three things and get them out of the way.
“Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.” – William James
Why To-Do Lists Disappoint and Overwhelm
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The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
TWO
While to-do lists are useful for task organization, they’re certainly
not the magical solution to our productivity problems. Otherwise
why would we get discouraged so often about how much we’re
getting done?
The satisfaction of crossing something off our list is fleeting, and
no matter how much we finish, there’s always more to tackle. Have
you ever found yourself stressed out just looking at your to-do list?
Viewing productivity as this ceaseless grind can cause anxiety and
reduce motivation.
The danger of failing to recognize how much you actually
accomplish is that it becomes easy to lose perspective, succumb to
feelings of failure and guilt, and burn out. That all changes when
you take a breather from the perpetual on-the-go approach and
pay more attention to what you’ve achieved by keeping a done list.
The simple act of writing down and keeping track of what you
accomplish is motivating and illuminating.
How do you keep a done list?
1. When you do anything you consider useful, however small
a step it may be, write it down on your done list.
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2. At the end of the day, look at your list. Reflect on and
celebrate all the things you got done!
So why does this work? Here’s a quick rundown of how this
practice benefits your mindset:
Putting things on your done list is more than a simple self-pat on
the back. Your done list gives you credit for the full breadth of
your accomplishments, capturing everything that came up during
the day that might not have been preordained by your to-do list
or initial plans. Seeing your list at the end of the day gives you a
chance to fully appreciate what you got done that day.
Taking a moment to stop and see the roses of your efforts
offers powerful encouragement. Without these pauses, you
lose opportunities to gain continual boosts of motivation and
self-knowledge, because progress itself fuels your drive and
engagement. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile
and psychologist Steven Kramer found that even small wins
contribute to that progress power.
When you record your dones, you capture proof of progress,
enabling you to see all the tiny triumphs that hold value in the
long run rather than focusing too much on what’s left on your
plate. That plate is going to be full most of the time anyway. So it’s
ultimately more useful for you to accept that and learn from your
Success is a series of small wins.
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
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progress history to fill your plate in a happier, healthier, richer way.
There’s wisdom and balance to be found in acknowledging
the reality of accomplishments rather than spending too much
precious time and brainpower on worrying about everything
you should be doing. Keeping a done list encourages reflection
and awareness of the hows and whys of where you are — which
has value for your reality going forward, yielding patience and
perspective and a better ability to plan.
Productivity in Practice: Marc Andreessen’s Trick to Feeling Marvelously EfficientThere’s a funny mental trap many productive people fall into:
they often overlook their own productivity. Sometimes the more
productive you are, the more likely you are to beat yourself up
at the end of the day, thinking “I wasn’t very productive today.”
Ambitious people measure themselves by their progress towards
achieving audacious goals, so they often can’t appreciate a single
day’s worth of tiny, incremental advancements that they’ve made.
Plus, the fuller your day is with activity, the harder it seems to
pinpoint what exactly it is that you did at all.
Between starting Netscape, Opsware, Ning, and Andreessen
Horowitz, Marc Andreessen has already done monumental work in
his career. Yet he still seemed particularly at risk of falling into this
familiar-sounding trap:
[Y]ou know those days when you’re running around all day
and doing stuff and talking to people and making calls and
responding to emails and filling out paperwork and you get
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
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home and you’re completely exhausted and you say to yourself,
“What the hell did I actually get done today?”
To arm himself against the daunting quest of making meaningful
progress toward his big objectives, Marc came up with a system:
the done list (which he called his “anti-todo list”, a tongue-in-
cheek contrast to the much more popular to-do list).
Every time he did something useful during the day, he wrote it
down on his done list, which he kept on index cards. He explains:
Each time you do something, you get to write it down and
you get that little rush of endorphins that the mouse gets
every time he presses the button in his cage and gets a food
pellet.
And then at the end of the day… take a look at today’s
card and its Anti-Todo list and marvel at all the things you
actually got done that day.
Keeping a separate list of accomplishments means that when Marc
takes stock of what he has achieved, he gets an unadulterated rush,
free from the nagging and guilt of what’s still left on his to-do list.
Rather than waiting for major milestones to celebrate achievements, recognize that tiny, wonderful triumphs happen every single day.
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
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There’s value in the act of slowing down to write down
accomplishments that’s inaccessible without acknowledgment. It
turns out that “being able to put more notches on my
accomplishment belt, so to speak, by writing down things on my
Anti-Todo list as I accomplish them throughout the day makes me
feel marvelously productive and efficient. Far more so than if I just
did those things and didn’t write them down.”
Chris Savage, CEO of the video-marketing company Wistia, wrote
about how magnifying your perspective on progress to look at the
day-to-day is key to generating the momentum and joy to accomplish
big things. He expressed this lesson concisely in two graphs:
versus this:
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
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There’s a hard road to travel to get to big-time achievements and
reaching heady dreams, whether it’s making your first million,
mastering the piano, running a marathon, or building a successful
company — and if you’re too exhausted every day to take stock of
your successes, you’ll lose heart.
Your done list will energize you. Rather than waiting for major
milestones to celebrate achievements, recognize that tiny,
wonderful triumphs happen every single day. Turn that into
a daily process of rejuvenation and inspiration after a hard-
day’s work, and you’ll add a crucial ingredient to your day that
maintains the positive emotional balance necessary to accomplish
great things.
The Antidote to Feeling Unproductive
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The Motivating Power of Progress
THREE
Setting aside time on a daily or weekly basis to reflect is a
powerful productivity hack.
It seems counterintuitive to spend extra time to do one more
thing — but taking stock of what you’ve accomplished provides
critical fuel. Harvard Business School professor Teresa Amabile
and psychologist Steven Kramer, authors of the incisive The
Progress Principle, pored over 12,000 daily work diary entries
and were surprised to find out that making progress — even small
wins — on meaningful work is the most powerful motivator.
Key to fostering that progress is a positive “inner work life”, what
Amabile and Kramer call the jumble of feelings, motivation, and
realization that forms feedback loops in reaction to the workday
that impacts your performance, creativity, and productivity.
People with positive inner work lives are highly engaged in their
work while those with negative inner work lives are less present
and less productive.
Making progress — even small wins — on meaningful work is the most powerful motivator.
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Keeping a done list, recording your observations and thoughts
along with the tasks you accomplish, enables you to pay attention
to your inner work life, ensuring better engagement with your
work and sustainable progress.
The Danger of Overlooking How Much You Get Done
There’s a cost to ignoring your efforts and disregarding your inner
work life. Dan Ariely did a study showing how people whose work
was acknowledged outperformed others — even when the work
itself wasn’t particularly meaningful.
In the experiment, three groups had to finish a trivial task on a
sheet of paper for a payment of 55 cents. After each page, they
had the option to complete another page for 5 cents less or stop.
People in the Acknowledged Group wrote their name on each
sheet before submitting it to an experimenter who would look
at it, nod, and place the page in a folder. Those in the Ignored
Group didn’t write their names on their completed pages, which
the experimenter placed into a large stack of papers without any
reaction. Those in the Shredded Group also didn’t include their
names, and their completed pages were fed straight into the
shredder.
What happened? The Acknowledged Group earned more and
completed more pages than the two other groups.
The Motivating Power of Progress
Avg EarnedAcknowledged
2.42
2.6
$3.01
6.32
6.77
$3.01
Ignored
Shredded
Avg Completed
22
The startling result, though, was that the performance of the
Ignored Group closely resembled that of the Shredded Group,
suggesting that failing to acknowledge how much you get done is
dangerously similar to actively destroying the fruits of your labor.
If you let even that simple act of appreciation pass you by, you risk
losing valuable boosts of motivation.
Can You See Your Progress? It Makes a Difference.
The trouble with much of our work is that progress isn’t always
visible.
Another experiment by Ariely shows the benefits of setting up a
work process to reveal your forward steps. In this study, students
were paid to build Lego figurines called Bionicles. With every
additional figurine, the student would earn a decreasing amount
of money. Group A saw its Bionicles dismantled as soon as they
were built. While told that their work would be disassembled at
the end of the study, Group B students placed each completed
Bionicle on a desk before continuing onto the next one.
Group B out-built Group A, eleven to seven. Seeing visible proof
of progress in the accumulating Bionicles on the desk helped
drive Group A to keep building, even with diminishing monetary
returns and knowledge of their Bionicles’ eventual disassembled
fates.
While countless game, app, and website designers grasp the role
visible progress plays in engagement, you too can harness that
progress power by keeping a done list. All it takes is a reflective
pause to get the satisfying sight of your own kind of accumulating
The Motivating Power of Progress
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Bionicles rather than letting them slip past you, unrecognized
sources of fuel.
Productivity in Practice: Making Progress Visible with a Team Done List
Teams and organizations benefit from group recognition of their
progress. In fact, team done lists make up one productivity system
used by many successful startups, from Google to Foursquare to
Buzzfeed.
During Google’s growth stage, Larry Schwimmer, an early
software engineer, stumbled upon a deceptively simple solution
that persists to this day at Google and throughout Silicon Valley.
In this system called Snippets, employees receive a weekly email
asking them to write down what they did last week and what they
plan to do in the upcoming week. Replies get compiled in a public
space and distributed automatically the following day by email.
The Snippets process at any scale is a compelling productivity
solution, and companies of all sizes have adopted it. Some, like
SV Angel, rich in Google DNA, do daily snippets. The routine
process encourages employees to reflect and jot down a forward-
looking plan for getting stuff done, all while requiring a minimal
disruption in the employee’s actual work.
At Buzzfeed, employees send a weekly email to Jon Steinberg,
president and COO, describing what they’ve been working on
and what help they need. Everyone can also subscribe to each
others’ snippets. As for Jon, he reads his compiled snippets over
the weekend and then responds with feedback and questions. This
The Motivating Power of Progress
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makes it possible, as Jon explains, to “connect dots and people on
things I wouldn’t otherwise know about.”
With Snippets showing Jon and the growing team at Buzzfeed
where all the dots are, they gain a sense of the layers of individual
details and multitudes of dots that create the big picture. The
result is that:
Snippets … forces me to review my week and tell the whole
company what my contributions and challenges were for the
week. Some weeks it feels great, other weeks not so much.
On the weeks it feels disappointing, it’s a great forcing
function to prioritize and focus.
This kind of transparency may show you something wonderful or
ugly, what’s working and what’s sticking out. Understanding the
picture’s composition reveals details and provokes insight. As Jeff
Weiner, CEO of LinkedIn, suggests with great wisdom — “if you
don’t take the time to think proactively you will increasingly find
yourself reacting to your environment rather than influencing it.”
In the workplace, even less than in our personal lives, we don’t
take time to think, reflect, and situate ourselves because it often
looks unproductive, like you’re not doing anything.
Maybe this explains people’s reluctance to put reflection and
review into real, meaningful practice. Yet embracing that
appearance of doing nothing and taking the time to think
is integral to be creative, and psychiatrist T. Byram Karasu
explains, “for previously unrelated thoughts and feelings
The Motivating Power of Progress
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to interact, to regroup themselves into new formations and
combinations, and thus to bring harmony to the mind.”
Tuning in, not just on an individual but team and company level,
is how you connect, sync, and plan, enabling creativity and drive
instead of waiting for lightning, influence rather than reaction.
The Motivating Power of Progress
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The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
FOUR
Emotions play an integral role in how we think and solve
problems, but we still tend to hold up as ideal the cool, rational
head, unclouded by something as fuzzy as feelings. Yet emotions
and your inner work life have a real, practical impact on your
motivation and productivity levels.
The parts of the brain that deal with emotions actually connect
to those dealing with perception and cognition. Parts of the
limbic system — once thought to be a separate emotional center
in the brain — are involved in forming memories, learning, and
attention. Emotions, then, are wired into cognitive functions and
processes.
They’re wired in more interesting ways than you might think, too.
Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, in his book, Descartes’ Error:
Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain, describes one of his
patients, Elliot, whose damaged ventromedial frontal lobe had
caused an inability to feel emotion. The interesting side effect? He
also lost his ability to make decisions. The way our brains are built
actually makes it impossible to prevent our emotions from clouding
our judgment. Instead, we need our cloudy emotions to reason and
to make decisions.
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The Destructive Effect of Prolonged Negative Emotions
If those emotions are negative, your motivation can take a
substantial nosedive. Negative emotions like fear, anxiety,
and sadness influence how creative and productive we are —
narrowing our thought patterns to weaken memory, planning, and
decision-making.
We also don’t work well under stress, though it’s a common
misconception. Through their comprehensive study of work
journal entries, the Progress Principle authors also disproved the
pervasive idea of “no pressure, no diamonds” that infects people’s
understanding of what drives the best work.
Analyzing the language used in nearly 12,000 employee diary
entries for accounts of progress and setbacks, Professor Amabile
and Kramer correlated those events to self-reported levels of
happiness and frustration. What they found was alarming. The
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
The Limbic SystemFornix
Corpus callosum
Anterior group thalamic nuclei
Cingulate gyrusParahippocampal gyrus
HippocampusHypothalamusMamillary body
Amygdaloid body
Pineal gland
Components in the CerebrumComponents in the
Diencephalon
28
negative impact of setbacks on your inner work life is three times
as powerful in affecting motivation than the positive power of
progress. You probably know from experience that it’s easier to
remember the bad stuff that happens to you than the good.
So why do our brains have a such a negativity bias? They’re
actually wired that way — to pay more attention to negative
experiences as a self-protective measure. In a sense, we’re still
scanning for threats as a remnant of our hunter and gatherer
brains, but this natural threat response is only meant to last for
short-term situations.
The problem with prolonged stress is that stress hormones stick
around and start meddling with the brain’s wiring, affecting the
actual structure of your prefrontal cortex and ultimately impairing
cognitive function. Your language and math processing abilities,
working memory, and attention regulation deteriorate.
At the same time, those stress hormones strengthen the fear
conditioning and emotional memory connections in the amygdala.
What happens then, as Dr. Amy Arnsten, professor of neurobiology
at Yale, describes is that the “orchestration of the brain’s response
patterns switches from slow, thoughtful [prefrontal cortex]
regulation to the reflexive and rapid emotional responses of the
amygdala.”
Setbacks have 3x as powerful a negative impact on motivation than the positive effect of progress.
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
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In other words, we turn from thoughtful, smart human beings
into anxious cats chasing laser pointers. Instead of your prefrontal
cortex directing your attention to deal with the task in front of
you, you’re more likely to be diverted by something shiny and
distracted by worry. In these modern times, the anxiety resulting
from a persistent attention to setbacks and the constant squeeze
of pressure can cause a downward spiral that eats away at focus,
productivity, creativity, and optimal decision-making.
The more we realize which direction our emotion, inner work life,
and motivation is headed, the more we can take control and break
out of that negative feedback loop.
The Durability of Positivity
Contrary to how negativity generally narrows thinking, positivity
broadens in more ways than one. Positive moods facilitate
problem-solving and improve cognitive flexibility, innovation,
decision-making, and intrinsic motivation.
What’s more, Amabile and Kramer discovered that positive
emotions actually have a prolonged impact: “The more positive a
person’s mood on a given day, the more creative thinking he did
the next day—and, to some extent, the day after that—even taking
into account his moods on those later days.”
That’s where unleashing the power of the progress principle
comes in. When you’re able to review and reflect on your
accomplishments and inner work life using your done list, you’ll
be able to recognize patterns, gain insight about your work
and work relationships, and appreciate progress that would’ve
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
30
otherwise gone unrecognized. Not only will this engage you more
meaningfully in your work, your emotions can gain a lift as well.
Productivity in Practice: The 2-Step Formula to Battle NegativityWhen you have a great day, it’s easy to feel the stimulating power
of progress. But what about your not so great days? How can you
avoid the downward spiral when you’re feeling negative?
Failures and holdups demotivate and sap the energy of even the
most confident of people, especially when they don’t receive
any kind of positive feedback from their day. You know that old
relationship cliché that you should never go to bed upset with
your significant other? Waking up upset the next day just serves to
reinforce negative feelings you have between each other.
Use this advice in your relationship with yourself!
A simple way to make sure you don’t get too down and can bounce
back sooner than later is to take time to create that positive
feedback. You’ll be much more likely to wake up the next day
motivated, ready to be productive and tackle whatever life may
throw at you.
Step 1: Take time to analyze your losses.
Just because negative emotions can diminish your productivity
doesn’t mean you should go out of your way to avoid thinking
negative thoughts or addressing what went wrong. The key is to
curb a chronic negative feedback loop. So take time to reflect on
your errors and trials in addition to your progress. They’re more
valuable than you might think.
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
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Let me explain: Errors are mistakes you make, poor decisions that
you’d change if given a second chance. If you let those errors get to
your head, they can have a greater cost than they need to.
Trials are more nuanced. They’re poor results from good decisions
that you’ve made that still feel like errors, but given a second
chance, you’d make the same choice. For example, if I see an
open Michael Jordan under the hoop, then I should pass it to him,
because 99.9% of the time, he’s going to put it into the basket
when he’s that close. But if for some reason, he misses the dunk,
that doesn’t invalidate the original correct decision to pass it
to him. It wasn’t an error, it was just a bad result. The thing is,
emotionally, it still feels like a mistake which can lead you to be
hesitant to make the better decision again.
When you notice errors and trials happening, take a break in order
to de-stress and move onto step 2.
Step 2: Create positive feedback!
Surprisingly, reframing your reaction to errors and trials to one of
gratitude can be one of the most useful forms of positive feedback.
We can flip our failures into strengths if we can learn from them.
Turning setbacks and losses into something to be grateful for is a
powerful mental trick. Be grateful for your errors because errors
provide insight. Be grateful for your trials because you’re still in
the game and have more chances to make the better decision in the
future and reap the benefits.
The use of gratitude journals — where you write down what
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
32
you’re grateful for every day — increases long-term happiness,
personal growth, and your ability to cope with the difficulties
that life throws at you. Research by psychologist Martin Seligman
uncovered how people who wrote down three good things daily
for just one week felt happier and less depressed, even after one
month. And when Seligman did three-month and six-month
follow-ups, the happiest participants were the ones who had
continued the practice throughout.
When you create positive feedback, you’ll also cultivate patience
and resilience. With a done list, you can always look back and
see how you persevered and survived much worse days or gain
inspiration and strength from the wonderful days.
Carrying over a feeling of failure from one day to the next is a
recipe for a string of unproductive days. So make sure to end the
day not feeling like it was lost. Instead, take the time to be grateful
to your past self for making errors you can learn from and for
having the strength to carry on through trials so that your future
self has a fighting chance to do better tomorrow. You’re still in the
game, and that’s something to be thankful for!
The Surprising Impact of Emotion on How Your Brain Works
33
FIVE
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
The quiet yet powerful act of reflection is an often overlooked
practice for productivity and happiness, because it often looks
like you’re not actually doing anything. Yet your brain needs time
to contemplate and muse if you ever want to go beyond merely
doing stuff to doing stuff really well or doing what matters most.
Being great at what you do and making an impact takes time and
thought.
A research review by Mary Helen Immordino-Yang uncovers how
mental downtime — when the mind is not distracted and is free
to wander — is necessary for introspection. Our habits of constant
digital consumption and always-on work situations, which keep
demanding externally-focused attention, are exhausting. They
leave less time for what Immordino-Yang calls “constructive
internal reflection.” Your brain needs its own “me-time” to process
information and make sense of your life by recollecting memories,
imagining the future, processing emotions, and figuring out
meaning and moral judgments to lead to new insights and
awareness.
Discover What’s in Your Blind Spots
Done lists are an easy way to carry out constructive internal
reflection. This simple method captures details, progress, and
34
thoughts that otherwise can get lost in the stream of busy.
Sometimes you move and do so much that it’s hard to remember
what you did, even a day later. In fact, we have a lot of blind spots
in life. Have you ever been so caught up in a task — having your
nose in a book, or your eyes on your phone, or your energy on a
basketball game — that you don’t notice something in plain sight
or sound? You walk into a pole, you don’t hear what someone just
said, you don’t realize your dining companion has left the table.
There’s actually a term for that — inattentional blindness — a
state of unseeing that results from paying attention somewhere
else.
The invisible gorilla experiment is a famous demonstration of
inattentional blindness. People watched a video of two teams
wearing white and black passing a basketball, instructed
beforehand to carefully count the number of passes made by the
team dressed in white. Halfway through the video, a woman in a
gorilla suit walks through to the middle of the screen, beats her
chest, and then walks offscreen.
About half the viewers fail to see the gorilla at all! Without the
instruction to focus your attention on counting the passes, though,
a gorilla on the basketball court would’ve been pretty hard to
miss.
Inattentional blindness isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s the
flipside of focus, an essential skill. What’s funny about the
invisible gorilla test, though, is how you think you would’ve totally
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
35
seen the gorilla. Other people would miss the gorilla but no, not
us! As Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons, the psychologists
who conducted the invisible gorilla test, note, “We think we see
ourselves and the world as they really are, but we’re actually
missing a whole lot.”
The fact that humans tend to miss so much is what the world’s best
professional pickpocket Apollo Robbins relies on. He choreographs
the spotlight of your attention, creating blind spots, so that he can
perform his craft. He told Adam Green of The New Yorker how he
does this, “Attention is like water. It flows. It’s liquid. You create
channels to divert it, and you hope that it flows the right way.”
In these days of screens and information streams and our busy
lives of work, family, worries, and play — there certainly are a
lot of diverting channels. How can you better choreograph your
attention and see what you’re missing to understand whether
you’re paying attention to the right things? What’s happening in
different areas of your life? What do you want to spend more or
less time doing?
Daily recording and reflection yields an honest overview of
whether you’re missing things that matter or focusing your
attention on the unimportant.
Connecting the Dots
Take a step back to shine the spotlight on details that would
normally melt away from your consciousness by the end of the
day. Regular review helps increase your self-knowledge, which
equips you to learn, grow, and get better at what’s important to
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
36
you. Attaining balance, meaning, health, happiness, or success
doesn’t happen by itself.
A bit of reflection gives you the ability to connect the dots —
which leads to insight, an honest understanding of where you are,
and a clearer picture of where you’re headed.
Analyze setbacks and successes, learn from experiences, and
connect the dots. Can you spot patterns in your reactions and
behaviors? Are you more productive the next day when you go
to sleep earlier? Does your exercise frequency drop during a
meeting-heavy week?
When you recognize unconstructive patterns and think through
them, you acquire knowledge, understanding, and motivation
that leads to durable behavior and attitude adjustments. You can
go back into your log and see where decisions, actions and efforts
have led before. In short, you can pinpoint where things started
Coming back is the thing that enables you to see how all the dots in your life are connected, how one decision leads you to another, how one twist of fate, good or bad, brings you to a door that later takes you to another door, which aided by several detours – long hallways and unforeseen stairwells – eventually puts you in the place you are now. — Ann Patchett, What Now?
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
37
to go wrong or what helped make things right. Having such a
record is like a map to give you better direction into the future.
Look backward at any time to forge ahead more meaningfully and
productively.
There’s wisdom in the saying: “You can’t really know where you’re
going until you know where you’ve been.” With a more accurate
picture of where you are and what you have done, you then hold
the data and information that you can use to make stronger plans
for your future.
Productivity in Practice: The Key Reflective Question that Guided Benjamin Franklin
As an author, printer, politician, scientist, musician, politician,
diplomat, and inventor — not to mention his role as one of the
founding fathers of the United States — Benjamin Franklin was a
man who got a lot done. But early in life, Franklin was just another
guy who struggled with time management.
At age twenty in July of 1726, on a sea voyage home to
Philadelphia from London, Franklin began to think more about
what productivity really meant and how to achieve it. What was
important to Franklin was not the external goals of making money
or being famous. It was about the type of man he wanted to be.
Out of that thinking, Franklin developed a “plan for attaining
moral perfection”, a kind of revolutionary system of Getting
(Moral) Things Done. He wanted to attain thirteen virtues, a list
of character traits to live by that included lofty goals like justice to
everyday aims like cleanliness.
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
38
Like the rest of us, Franklin still found it a huge challenge to
practice his virtues, even expressing surprise that perhaps he
bit off more than he could chew, noting in his autobiography, “I
soon found I had undertaken a task of more difficulty than I had
imagined.” He delved into why changing for the better was so
hard, arriving at the explanation that “habit took the advantage of
inattention; inclination was sometimes too strong for reason.”
When you ignore the journey and the process, you ignore yourself
and you don’t know how to push against the pull of inclination
away from reason and goals. Franklin, despite his insecurities,
paid attention to his journey, understanding that inattention
would not carry him where he wanted to go, toward positive
growth.
He devised a scorecard and other techniques to keep himself on
track, but one of the most powerful tricks he used was also his
simplest. Every night before bed, as part of his “examination of the
day”, Franklin would ask himself, “What good have I done today?”
While Franklin’s question focused on what “good” he did everyday
because he was trying to become a more virtuous human being,
the frame of reflecting on the good and the positive aspects of
your day is a neat mental trick to better evaluate and understand
whether you’re spending your time wisely. On days when he
succeeded, the question would be a chance for him to recognize
and acknowledge his wins. On days when he fell short, the
question was a nudge to reflect on what’s important and how he
could get back on the right path.
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
39
What this wasn’t, though, was a way for Franklin to achieve
perfection — and that wasn’t the point. It was the process that
made a difference. In his words, “[T]ho’ I never arrived at the
perfection I had been so ambitious of attaining, but fell far short of
it, yet I was, by the endeavour, a better and happier man.”
Growth, in some sense, happens through a constant editing of
our habits and our days. Whether as an individual, a group, or a
huge company, you have to remember to look inward to figure out
whether you’re moving where you want to go. And in doing so,
you might find yourself better and happier day to day, too.
The Enlightening Habit of Reflection
40
SIX
How to Make a Done List
Okay, so you’ve read about the benefits of reflection and that
acknowledging how much you get done every day increases your
motivation, insight, and perspective — and now you want to get
started on your own done list. These are the simple, basic steps:
1. When you do anything you consider useful, however small
a win it may be, write it down on your done list. (Or wait
until the end of the day to write down your list.)
2. At the end of the day, look at your list. Reflect on and
celebrate all the things you got done!
3. Review regularly — in the mornings to kickstart your day,
every week, month, or year, or simply whenever you’d like
a little boost or look back.
If you ever experience done list writer’s block, these questions are
a great way to get you going:
What did you get done today?
Simply look back at your day through the lens of accomplishment.
Answering this question is a quiet act of affirmation and
celebration.
41
What did I make progress on today?
Even on frustrating, seemingly unproductive days, you can almost
always find one thing on which you made progress.
What impacted your progress?
Is it something you can control and change so that you facilitate
progress rather than hinder it? Do you notice patterns resulting
from your environment or schedule that result in progress or
setbacks?
What stood out today and how did that make you feel?
Did your co-worker compliment you or did your kid say something
hilarious? Was a task particularly frustrating or difficult to get
through? Are you particularly proud or frustrated by something
you did today? What was remarkable about the day?
What did you do today that you especially want to remember
in the future?
This question guides you to record and reflect on accomplishments
that you can also pull up later for events like performance
evaluations, reviews, or reflective times like a new year or your
birthday. The proof of what worked well and what didn’t is in your
done list.
How can I turn negatives into progress tomorrow?
Learn from your setbacks and errors. Can you think about ways to
improve or make progress tomorrow based on what went wrong
today? Address and flip negative feelings into positive fuel for your
progress. We aren’t perfect and every single day will not be a good
day, but we can create better ones for ourselves in the future based
How to Make a Done List
42
on how we think about the past.
What good have I done today?
Follow Franklin’s example and examine positively. On successful
days, this question is a way to recognize your wins and balance out
your natural negativity bias. On less successful days, the question
nudges you to reflect on what’s important and how to get back on
the right path. Learn from negativity and gain strength from the
good.
What are 3 good things about today?
As you write down all the awesome things you accomplish, scan
for three daily positives to include on your list. Be specific, and
think through whether anything helped to make them happen. As
you record your good things and exercise daily gratitude, you’ll be
better able to sustain a positive feedback loop.
Still need some guidance and advice on creatinga great done list? Here are 8 helpful tips:
Figure out what done list schedule works best for you.
Some people like to write their dones as a batch at the end of the
day before they get ready for bed or when the workday draws to
a close. Others prefer to write their dones down as they finish or
switch tasks. If you do this, don’t forget to take a look at the end of
the day at how much your list has grown.
Either way, find which method works best for you! You might
even find your memory improving as you get into a daily habit of
recalling and recognizing your accomplishments.
How to Make a Done List
43
Get into a habit.
It’s important to make your done list a habit for a regular lift in
energy, inspiration, and motivation after a hard day’s work and to
sustain a positive feedback loop.
Think of your done list like a daily check-in with yourself for the
sake of your productivity, wellness, and success. It’s like taking a
pause to digest your day rather than swimming full-speed ahead
right after a meal.
Like any new good habit, it takes time to build up a regular routine.
In the beginning of your practice especially, try not to miss any
days. Done lists are much like going to the gym — once you get in a
groove, it’s easier to stay in it.
Don’t use lack of time as an excuse to skip out on your done
list practice. Amabile and Kramer recommend a mere 5 to 10
minutes a day. You’re probably spending way more time on
Facebook. But with a done list, you’ll be adding great value to
your day, maintaining the positive emotional balance necessary to
accomplish great things.
Count your small wins.
Count wins of all sizes. Don’t wait until you’ve hit big goals like
completing a project or getting a promotion — which happen only
occasionally and make it difficult to appreciate small but important
advancements. Don’t dismiss all the smaller things that fill out
your days and are building up in the long run.
So even if you don’t finish a whole project or hit a major milestone,
you’ve likely made progress on some aspect, whether it’s a super
How to Make a Done List
44
rough draft or sketching out a plan. Record that and give small
steps their due.
Be guided by what matters.
While you can certainly be over-inclusive about what you get done
during the day to get the ball rolling, remember that the resulting
lists should ultimately provide some value to you.
What matters to you? Unlike to-do lists which can fill up with
all sorts of tasks, done lists are most useful when populated by
notes that carry some significance. While one person may want to
avoid recording household chores like “paid the bills” or “did the
laundry”, another person might gain value from seeing those tasks
on their done list at the end of the day.
Express yourself, provide context, and experiment as you go.
Unlike the checklists and itemization of to-do lists, you have more
freedom in how you choose to write down your dones. The beauty
of the done list is that you can make it up as you go.
You can jot down whatever you find interesting and notable
about what you get done during the day, as well as any thoughts
and observations. Done lists are like bite-size diaries, so don’t be
afraid to get personal and express yourself. Emotional context and
commentary will add value as you reflect and review. Maybe you
can puzzle out why your afternoon was unproductive or savor the
pleasure of figuring out a bug.
Use whatever methods and styles you prefer. Write in short
fragments, bullet points, full paragraphs, or poetry. Build your
How to Make a Done List
45
done list in whatever way works best for you, and be patient.
Figuring out what to write down and how in a way that’s effective
for you takes time and experimentation — and the way you reflect
and grow may also change.
A done list is a great way to transform your mindset into action
mode so that you’re making progress toward your goals and
priorities. You’ll know when you receive helpful boosts of
motivation or insight as you go whether your done list style is
working well or not.
Review regularly to gather self-intelligence.
Review your done list regularly to gain the maximum benefits.
Reviewing what you got done doesn’t take a lot of time, but in
return, you’ll start to be more aware of your achievements. A done
list helps you acknowledge how you deal with what life brings your
way, the planned and the unexpected.
Note any productivity patterns, your level of engagement, and
your moods. Having written proof grants you stronger footing to
implement change by providing information about how to improve
— and importantly — how you’re doing well.
Are you spending time on things that aren’t on your to-do list? Do
you get more writing done after dinner? Is there a time of day or
week that you’re most productive? That means you can schedule
more smartly.
Eventually you’ll be able to see whether you’re spending time and
energy on what really matters to you, whether you’re confusing
How to Make a Done List
46
busywork for actual progress, and proof of how you’re actually
prioritizing your day. Learn about yourself and where you’re
expending your energy, improve your planning, and feel happier
about what you got and will get done.
Balance your to-do lists.
Don’t just make your done list a “done” version of your to-do list.
The value of the done list is its responsiveness to you and the
reality of your day rather than reflecting a pre-conceived list of
tasks. This way, you control your lists instead of the other way
around.
You’ll probably still use to-do lists, but now you can get a balanced
perspective. Pay attention to the journey of how your tasks turn
into dones. How much of your to-do list is getting to your done list?
As you go along, you might even find that both lists start
working in concert. From the knowledge you gain from keeping a
done list, you’ll improve your planning ability and understanding
of what’s more realistic and important to tackle next.
Keep a done list with your team for group productivity.
Show and tell what you get done with your team. Just as you
miss out on details of your life unless you’re mindful and reflect
regularly, other people can’t know about all your great work unless
you find a way to communicate that fact. It also makes everyone’s
job easier when there’s an accessible high-level view of all the
moving parts.
A team done list is also a form of communication. For example, at
I Done This, we keep a team done list and recently my co-worker
How to Make a Done List
47
included this entry: “we were in The Economist, which is pretty
sweet”. It’s not necessarily something she did, but it’s a memorable
accomplishment for our team that she wanted to put on the record
and celebrate — without sending a whole separate email about it.
While our suggested done list questions for individuals are
great for teams as well, here are a few more that account for the
collaboration and cooperation that happen in the workplace:
Can you identify barriers to your progress or other people’s
and address them?
Can you identify facilitators to progress, such as points where
you can improve communication or save time?
Do you need help with anything? How can you help your
teammates?
Is there an individual, team, or company-wide accomplishment
you want to point out and celebrate?
Is there anyone you want to thank or encourage for supporting
you and/or for doing a great job?
How to Make a Done List
48
'Til Next Time!
A done list prods you to shift your focus to acknowledge what you
accomplish and take stock rather than stress about what hasn’t
happened yet.
Stay positive through exhaustion, frenzy, and discouragement,
and gain momentum from your small wins to pave the way to
achieving great things and living happily ever after, day by day.
Still have questions about done lists?
Feel free to email [email protected], and she’ll personally
reply.
You can also find us at:
idonethis.com
twitter.com/idonethis
linkedin.com/company/idonethis
facebook.com/idonethis
Epilogue
49
Notes
Teresa Amabile & Steven Kramer, The Progress Principle: Using
Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work
(Harvard Business Press Review, 2011).
We’re heavily inspired by the work of Professor Teresa Amabile
and Steven Kramer and cite The Progress Principle throughout
this e-book. Head to progressprinciple.com for more information.
Chapter 1
Roy F. Baumeister & John Tierney, Willpower: Rediscovering the
Greatest Human Strength (Penguin Group, 2011).
Amy N. Dalton & Stephen A. Spiller, “Too Much of a Good Thing:
The Benefits of Implementation Intentions Depend on the Number
of Goals,” Journal of Consumer Research 39 (2012): 600-14.
R. A. Emmons & L. A. King, “Conflict among Personal Strivings:
Immediate and Long-Term Implications for Psychological and
Physical Well-being,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
54 (1988): 1040–48.
50
R.F. Baumeister & E.J. Masicampo, “Consider It Done!: Plan
making can eliminate the cognitive effects of unfulfilled goals,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101 (2011): 667-83.
Found at users.wfu.edu/masicaej/
MasicampoBaumeister2011JPSP.pdf
Dan Ariely & Klaus Wertenbroch (2002), “Procrastination,
Deadlines, and Performance: Self-Control by Precommitment,”
Psychological Science, Vol. 13, No. 3: 219-24.
Available at people.duke.edu/~dandan/Papers/PI/deadlines.pdf
Chapter 2
Andreessen quotes: pmarchive.com/guide_to_personal_
productivity.html
Graphs used with permission from Chris Savage. Originally
posted: savagethoughts.com/post/5552519501/you-can-be-an-
expert-at-anything
Chapter 3
Dan Ariely, Emir Kamenica, Dražen Prelec, “Man’s Search for
Meaning: The Case of Legos”, Journal of Economic Behavior
& Organization 67 (2008): 671-77.Available at people.duke.
edu/~dandan/Papers/Upside/meaning.pdf
Jon Steinberg quote: linkedin.com/today/post/
article/20130529210800-900547-what-i-schedule-what-i-don-t-
schedule
The science of the done list / notes
51
Jeff Weiner quote: linkedin.com/today/post/
article/20130403215758-22330283-the-importance-of-
scheduling-nothing
T. Byram Karasu quote: T. Byram Karasu, The Art of Serenity:
The Path to a Joyful Life in the Best and Worst of Times (Simon &
Schuster, 2003).
Chapter 4
limbic system image: BruceBlaus/(CC by 3.0) en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/File:Blausen_0614_LimbicSystem.png
Antonio Damasio, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason and the
Human Brain (Penguin Books, 1994).
Amy F. Arnsten, “Stress signalling pathways that impair prefrontal
cortex structure and function.” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 10
(2009): 410-22.
Found at utdallas.edu/~mxa049000/lessons/research/
Norepinephrine/Arnsten 20stress 20and 20PFC 20NNR
2009nrn2648.pdf
“The 2-Step Formula to Battle Negativity” edited and adapted
from blog.idonethis.com/post/68881068836/how-to-keep-
fighting-in-the-face-of-failure, with permission from James Chin.
Martin E.P. Seligman & Tracy A. Steen, Nansook Park, Christopher
Peterson, “Positive Psychology Progress: Empirical Validation of
Interventions,” American Psychologist 60 (2005): 410-21.
The science of the done list / notes
52
Available www.ppc.sas.upenn.edu/articleseligman.pdf
Chapter 5
Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, Joanna A. Christodoulou,
& Vanessa Singh, “Rest Is Not Idleness: Implications of the
Brain’s Default Mode for Human Development and Education,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science, July 2012, Vol. 7, no. 4,
352-64.
Check out theinvisiblegorilla.com/videos.html to watch the
invisible gorilla experiment in action.
Chabris/Simon quote: Christopher Chabris & Daniel Simon, The
Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us (Random House,
2010).
Apollo Robbins quote: newyorker.com/
reporting/2013/01/07/130107fa_fact green current
Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
(1896).
Available at openlibrary.org/books/OL6565766M/The_
autobiography_of_Benjamin_Franklin.
Franklin schedule image: archive.org/stream/
autobiographyofb02fran#page/100/mode/2up
The science of the done list / notes
53
Thank you!
Thanks so much for reading our book! Now you can add it to your
done list.
What did you get done today?
Finished reading The Busy Person’s Guide to the Done List
Share your wins and what you got done on social media using
the hashtag #idonethis. If you enjoyed our book, tell your friends
about it!
“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.” — Mary Oliver
Find us at:
idonethis.com
twitter.com/idonethis
linkedin.com/company/idonethis
facebook.com/idonethis
Making progress — even small wins — on meaningful work is the most powerful motivator.